Welcome back to Movie Recap. Today I'm gonna show you a 2011 Chinese historical drama war
film called, The Flowers of War. Spoilers ahead. Sit back, relax and enjoy the video.
The movie is one of the horrifying atrocities in the history, where the Japanese Army invaded the
city of Nanking in China. It tells about the journey of the drunken American who failed to
escape and finds himself saving the students and the prostitutes from the Japanese army.
It begins with a girl named Shu narrating the story.
The opening scene shows the teenage students from the convent desperately
running in a shattered street while the Japanese soldiers are firing at them.
The group is separated. The two young girls hide in the large round concrete
while the Japanese kill some of them. Meanwhile, the drunken American man named
John is being chased by the Japanese soldier, but he leaves him alone since he is a westerner.
John sees them and asks to help him go to the cathedral.
While some Japanese soldiers are running after the students, the Chinese soldiers
wait for the perfect timing to shoot the Japanese. When they are about to leave,
a tank and Japanese army continuously fire them, leaving only a few alive.
Despite the lack of weapons and manpower, the Chinese soldiers fight for their country. They
start to attack and bomb each other, even using their own people to explode their enemy's tanks.
Meanwhile, the students arrive at the cathedral surrounded by Japanese troops,
followed by the American and the two students.
Before he enters, John asks George for money as compensation since he is sent to bury the priest.
The students inside are devastated, crying while praying.
They start to blame Shu for his father's broken promise to take them to leave Nanking.
Then John comes and stands between the girls who are fighting.
After that, he continues to look for money in the church while being accompanied by George Cheng,
an orphan, adopted by the dead priest, Father Ingleman, and serves as the student leader.
A moment later, the famous women of Qin Huai River come knocking at the church's gate. George rejects
them and asks them to leave. The women are forcing George to open the gate and let them stay in the
church as they know that the church is under the protection of the Westerns. George continues to
decline them, but they are persistent, so Mo initiated and finds a way to open the gate.
The commotion attracts John and the girls' attention.
As they successfully enter the church, Shu and the girls look through the big window,
watching them head towards while John, sitting in the window,
flirts with them from the building. Meanwhile, John makes bread in front of the students.
Later on, the women come out from the cellar and interrupt John.
Mo is the only one who can speak English among the women. She flirts with John as a representative of
the women. They are chatting up in front of the children, while Shu stares at them disgustingly.
After their chat, she goes to John's room, and she can notice that she is being followed by someone.
John is expecting her to do their business in bed, but surprisingly,
Mo tries to make a deal with him. Since the Japanese will not touch the westerners,
she wants him to get them out of Nanking in exchange for their service.
Meanwhile, George looks for the notice from the Japanese when suddenly,
a Chinese soldier, Major Li, came threatening him to let them go inside.
So, he brings them inside the cellar with the women who are shocked and irritated by them.
It turns out that what Major Li was carrying was a young homeless boy named Pu Sheng.
After Major Li explained, he leaves the boy with them to go and watch out for the
enemies. He hears the children singing as he heads out, making him feel emotional.
He quietly put the shoe that one of the students had left before leaving them.
Mo waits for the Major and apologizes for the women's attitude earlier. Then suddenly,
a glass of wine fell from above. There is John, drunk and dressed as a priest. He teases and
sexually harasses Mo before Major Li finally leaves them, worrying how John can help save
them from the Japanese, judging by his current condition. After that, Mo slaps him and walks out.
The next day, the girls quarrel with the women over the bathroom as they do not want them to use
it. Suddenly, a bullet came through the window, straight to the girl's throat, that killed her.
A moment later, the Japanese army invaded the cathedral. They hurry to hide in the cellar while
Major Li, who stayed the night just outside the church, plants the explosives for the Japanese.
The girls are about to enter the cellar when a soldier finds them.
Then, Shu leads the girls to go upstairs instead to protect the women in the basement.
John plans to hide in the cabinet when he hears the gunshots.
He changed his mind and thought of the children.
Then the armies enter the church, searching for the girls who hide in the library. They locked
the door with the shelves, but unfortunately, the soldier found them and summons the others.
They run as if they have found fresh meats. Then they continue to chase the girls they call
the "virgins." Ripping their clothes and dragging them when suddenly,
John came, pretending to be a priest, commanding the soldiers to leave off.
However, Lieutenant Askari comes up to him, threatens them with a sword,
and continues their business like a madman, harassing the girls while John is knocked out.
When the Japanese soldiers are about to rape the girl, Major Li successfully shoots the two
of them from outside. Lieutenant Askari and others hurry to assemble outside and find who shot them.
As John becomes conscious, he grieves for the death of a girl who fell on the ground,
urging him to protect the rest.
When the Japanese army is finally outside, they have successfully fallen into Li's trap as Major
Li shoots the explosives one by one. But then, they spot Li's location and continuously fire him,
and throw grenades in the building before they enter. They found Major Li. They fire him,
and the building explodes as he sets up the explosives in the area that are connected to him.
Later on, a batch of Japanese soldiers came into the cathedral.
The Colonel apologizes to John, who pretends to be the priest,
for what their soldiers have done. He assures them to protect them and offers them some supplies.
Then, the Colonel, who seemed to love music, sees the piano, and plays a song to somehow
comfort them. Before they leave, he asks the students to sing next time as they come back.
After that, they mourn and bury the two girls in the front yard. Then, they go back inside,
where the women are waiting for them, and apologize to them as they enter the convent.
George speaks with John, convincing him to protect them.
But John thinks he cannot besides he is just pretending to be a priest.
Later on, Mo comes to John, commending him about what he did for the girls,
and asks him about their deal to escape.
Meanwhile, Dou seems to be really into the young boy, Pu Sheng. She plays the instrument for him,
entertaining and caring for him, who is in bad condition, and later on comforts him.
While John tries to fix the truck secretly, Mr. Meng,
Shu's father, comes scolding her and blaming her for staying in Nanking.
Shu is upset as she saw him earlier wearing the Japanese cloth on his arm, which he says is
just for survival. Then, before he leaves, he promises her again to get her out of Nanking.
The girls have been watching them upstairs and are more upset and calls her father a traitor.
After that, John speaks with Mr. Meng, who is working with the Japanese, about his plan on
fixing the truck to escape and insists on giving him the list of the tools he needs.
Almost the evening, John continues to fix the truck while Mo waits for him.
Shu is secretly watching him and runs when John enters and speaks with Mo,
who later on gets emotional. Mo opens up about her past as she sees herself in Shu,
who grew up in the convent. After being called a dirty, bearded man,
John shaves his beard to impress Mo. Meanwhile, they check on Pu Sheng,
who is dying due to his infected wound, uttering random words before he dies.
Then, while John is burying Sheng, the women and the students are watching.
Suddenly, the women realize that some of them are missing.
It turns out that Dou and Lan got out to look for more strings to entertain
Sheng while Lan looked for her earrings. So, Mo asks John to go look for them.
John and George go together; however, the guards stop them at the gate.
So, John uses Hasegawa as an excuse, telling them
that the girls need food to perform the Colonel's request, which he succeeds.
While walking, they meet his acquaintance, Terry, about to leave Nanking. Terry is surprised by his
existence and asks him to go with him. But John declines and proceed to find the women.
Meanwhile, Dan and Lan arrive at their headquarters, get what they need there,
and immediately leave. They are running scared
and hide as the Japanese look for women while shooting their guns.
Suddenly, Dan notices that the strings are missing, so they run and look for them.
As they found the strings, Japanese soldiers also found and chased them. They shot Lan;
while Dan continues to run, Lan still tries to protect her, but Dan is cornered. The Japanese
take turns to rape her, and she resists the last soldier that got triggered and kills her.
Not long after that, John and George came to their location.
They found Lan and Dan's dead bodies and returned to the church with that horrible news.
Mo translates it to the women, and they all feel deep sorrow.
After that, Mr. Meng came to John with the tools and the permit.
He entrusted John with the plan to get them out of Nanking,
especially her daughter and her classmates, as the Japanese do not trust him anymore.
The following day, the students sing in front of the Japanese soldiers. Then,
while the Colonel commends the students, Mosquito unintentionally intrudes into the
scene as her cat ran off. Shu acts and pretends that Mosquito is one
of them to protect the women from the Japanese, which she succeeds.
Colonel then proceeds with talking with John, he invites the children to perform at the event.
John humbly declines to protect the children who are also afraid. He has a gut feeling
about their true intention. Yet, Mr. Hasegawa is insistent about it, declaring that it is an order.
John realizes that Hasegawa has been keeping the church guarded
not to protect the students but to keep them for the celebration.
Before they finally leave, the soldier counts the girls to ensure no one will be exempted.
The innocent girls are curious about the invitation, while Mosquito, who pretended
to be a student, outbursts, as she does not want to go there because she knows what will happen.
She tells the girls about it then walks out. So,
John tries to comfort and assure the girls by lying to them about the truth.
John and Mo talk with each other. Mo tells him about her idea to sacrifice
herself since she was already raped before by her stepfather,
at their same age. So, she does not want them to experience it, but John does not like her idea.
That night, Shu leads the girls and tells them about her plan. After a while,
the girls went to the church tower. They are lining up, planning to jump off and
die instead of getting hurt by the Japanese. Then, John and the women try to get them down.
To calm and assure them, they offer to take their place and go with the Japanese instead of them.
After that, the women discuss what they have said,
as some of them reveal that what they just said was a lie.
They do not mean what they have said and do not want to sacrifice their lives for the students.
But then, Mo convinces them. She reminds them that it has been their job after all and urges
them to change how the poem characterizes them by doing something heroic. With Mo's influence,
the women united. They realize and decide to take the plunge. To sacrifice themselves to change how
people view them and fulfill what they have promised, that is, to protect one another.
Meanwhile, Shu and the other students are worried about the women too. So,
John comforts and uplifts them by telling how strong those women are. Feeling guilty,
Shu apologizes to John and confesses that she had a wrong impression for him and Mo.
Then, the girls bring their uniforms to the women and have a good time. They work together
to alter the curtains and wear them under the uniforms so their chest will not bulge out.
After that, the women and the girls say their farewells to each other.
Then, performs their signature song for Dou and the girls as a remembrance while Shu imagines
them singing in their beautiful dresses, as what they wore when they first entered from the gate.
Later on, Mo went to John's room to get a makeover. Since John is a mortician,
he is skillful with it. Before they begin, he appreciates her and confesses his feelings.
Later on, they indulge themselves in fulfilling their own sexual desires.
Then the women are astonished by her new look, so they are excited to get their hair done.
They lie down to wait for their turn while Mo assists John in doing their hairstyles one by one.
Afterward, they are all chattering about their gorgeous look.
When George counts them, he finds out that they are 1 short,
so George insists on joining them to protect the girls as promised to Father Ingleman.
So, they gather some hair from the girls, and John transforms it into a wig.
Then, the women break the mirrors to use them as a weapon.
Moments later, the Japanese armies come to pick up the girls,
and in return, he hands him his gift. While Mr. Meng comes to the soldier,
asking for her daughter to get exempted according to their deal.
The chief counts the women as they go out of the church, and John distributes to them what's inside
the gift bag one by one. While on the side, Mr. Meng is confused as he did not see his daughter.
Suddenly, the last woman to step into the truck tries to resist
and cries in frustration, then before they leave, the soldier shoots Mr. Meng on his head.
John hurries inside and gets the children in the truck.
He hides them by putting the wooden boxes and successfully starts the car.
Meanwhile, he stops by the checkpoint and shows them the permit.
They look at the back of the truck, where John offers them a wine.
So, John gives them the whole box of wine before they finally flee the city.
The movie ends with Shu, narrating how she feels sorry for those women who helped them,
denoting that the fate of the 13 flowers is unknown.